Hacker News: bdamm

New comment by bdamm in "Passkeys were invented by engineers with zero understanding of consumer brain"

bdamm — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 18:41:18 +0000

Passkeys on my iPhone works awesome.

Too bad for Yubikey. I don't need them any more.

New comment by bdamm in "Passkeys were invented by engineers with zero understanding of consumer brain"

bdamm — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 18:33:59 +0000

Just the other day I was creating an ID on a government web site, which offered a list of security questions such as "Title of your favorite movie" or "Someone that you admired as a child" and the answer was not allowed to have any spaces.

Just absurd.

New comment by bdamm in "LEDs’ potential to save our night skies"

bdamm — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 23:29:01 +0000

Deep dusk will be quite a disco ball.

New comment by bdamm in "Telegram's t.me domain has been suspended"

bdamm — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 00:13:05 +0000

Because their economy is almost exclusively oil? Quite a few countries of the world would qualify if that's the case.

New comment by bdamm in "Snails' teeth beats spider silk as nature's strongest material (2015)"

bdamm — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 20:44:40 +0000

"A modern passenger car" varies widely depending on what locale the reader is in. A passenger car in Jakarta is not at all the same as a passenger car in Los Angeles.

Can we just use Kilograms?

New comment by bdamm in "What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public"

bdamm — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 16:51:05 +0000

Why do you think that a platform with so many customers as to be industry defining, with dozens of interface options, with a massive feature set, with a global footprint and basically flawless uptime requirements, could be kept running by two guys?

New comment by bdamm in "What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public"

bdamm — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 16:46:43 +0000

If that was good business then presumably the brand could have done it at some point during their long slow decline?

New comment by bdamm in "Every new car sold in the European Union must include a driver monitoring camera"

bdamm — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 21:07:49 +0000

Expect an error but this will depend on the brand.

"Smudging" is a common trick. Just dab some face oil on the lens, just enough so it can't get detail but not so much that the system can tell there's a covering.

New comment by bdamm in "Claude Sonnet 5"

bdamm — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 21:05:34 +0000

Because the "other side" is busy trying to anthropomorphise AI into solving the trolly problem, while being mostly clueless about the actual problems.

They'll show up after the fact and whinge endlessly about how they should have been involved.

New comment by bdamm in "Claude Sonnet 5"

bdamm — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 21:02:22 +0000

How? Training and operating models seems to naturally focus on those willing to invest quite significantly in these operations.

New comment by bdamm in "There are a few things that I look back on as my mistakes in the early days"

bdamm — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 18:35:05 +0000

It's remarkable how often I hear about brilliant products being released by asshole personalities who were hard to work with, but still stayed engaged.

The other two extremes tend not to produce much of interest; the committee of people pleasers who have nothing passionate to argue about, and the group of absolute psychopaths, don't ever seem to be the origin story for industry-changing products.

New comment by bdamm in "There are a few things that I look back on as my mistakes in the early days"

bdamm — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 18:32:05 +0000

Which just goes to show that technical chops and business chops are entirely unrelated. I think John Carmack did alright anyway.

New comment by bdamm in "Project Valhalla, Explained: How a Decade of Work Arrives in JDK 28"

bdamm — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 21:02:09 +0000

Actually yes. Pretty much most credit cards are in fact JavaCards.

Weird but true, and quite obscure.

New comment by bdamm in "Project Valhalla, Explained: How a Decade of Work Arrives in JDK 28"

bdamm — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 20:58:28 +0000

Well, Oracle may have done fine, but IIRC open sourcing the JDK was Sun's very penultimate move on its deathbed. Oracle inherited the license to the trademark, but the actual JDK was already free.

New comment by bdamm in "How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart"

bdamm — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 18:25:36 +0000

Personally I loved it. The Japanese aesthetic is subtle and delightful. Also, riding my bicycle in the countryside with very few traffic signs to mar the view. Just the necessary ones, at exactly the right places. They assume you are not an idiot, and somehow it all works out!

New comment by bdamm in "I hacked into the worst e-bike and fixed it [video]"

bdamm — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 17:59:06 +0000

Ah, the fixie benefit is in every stroke, especially the ones where I'm slowing down with my legs and doing whatever else I want to be doing with my hands that doesn't involve the brakes. I wish I could transmit to you the pure zen-like joy that I experience when riding the fixie. It is not "worse case" anything. It is absolutely a wonderful experience and I will never, ever, give it up.

New comment by bdamm in "I hacked into the worst e-bike and fixed it [video]"

bdamm — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 19:34:08 +0000

You do you. I have a fast and light road fixie, and I have a nice carbon fiber road bike. Do I ride my road bike in fondos? Yes. Do I ride my road bike around town and for training? Mostly, no.

Why?

Never in my entire life have I ridden a flawless bicycle. Inevitably, small imperfections in the drive train creep in. A flawless bicycle isn't flawless for more than a few hundred miles. All it takes is one whack on a bike rack, one hurried toss, one oops where the bike falls over as I'm grabbing my gels from the pantry. And never mind actual crashes! Ever broken a derailleur hanger?

The fixie keeps going basically no matter what. A problem for the fixie is the kind of problem that sends me to the hospital. Which is to say, that the fixie can take a lot more abuse than I can. Does the drivetrain wear out? Sure! And it costs basically nothing to replace!

Personally I think any serious cyclist should have one. They are super fun to ride, robust, cheap to work on, and they make you stronger. What's not to like?

New comment by bdamm in "U.S. science is in chaos"

bdamm — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 17:39:11 +0000

Are you thinking of affirmative action?

Affirmative action is by design discriminatory, but not against nationality. It's discriminatory based on race and sex. So I think your grudge is not striking the right target. And in any case, affirmative action has been mostly wound down, which began to happen when Obama was President. Not because he did anything, but because SCOTUS declared that his election was evidence that affirmative action was no longer required and thus ruled against it in new cases.

New comment by bdamm in "Volkswagen started blocking GrapheneOS users"

bdamm — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 15:47:55 +0000

Could it be a right-to-repair issue? That seems to be the only legal wrench available for forcing automakers to open up access to anything.

New comment by bdamm in "Humanity isn't ready for the coming intelligence explosion"

bdamm — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 22:07:33 +0000

It is kind of a hard problem to solve. Sure, we can have expensive and custom equipment flying around, but the invasion of Ukraine (and really, any war when it gets bad enough) is all about economic efficiency. The question is not can it be done; the question is, can it be done repeatedly, can it be scaled, and can it be cheap?

We will have a fully autonomous Siri that is actually good before Ukraine gets autonomous motherships making targeting choices to repel Russian assault corps. However, given the pace of the war and the pace of AI development, that may actually happen. But it isn't happening today.